


What We Know Of Ruthlessness

by minniebot



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-30 01:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minniebot/pseuds/minniebot
Summary: All ideas must, necessarily, come from somewhere. Solstryce is the source of more trauma than anyone could reasonably guess.





	What We Know Of Ruthlessness

“We are always to be ready for war,” he is told, barely young enough to wrap his chubby fingers around the hilt of the broadsword handed to him. His father could not - would never - make it to these practices to train his own son, and so here he stands, marshal statuesque and looming in front of him.

 

The first time he strikes him, punishment for dropping a blade too heavy for his untrained wrists to hold up, his palm flickers alight, the iron crossguard fades into powder, and the man cooks in his armor.

 

He never finds out exactly how his father reacts to the news. He suspects that he's never even informed, and the marshal is replaced quietly and without fuss. His lessons are relocated to the library, mostly, because the Ikithon family has never seen much use for the magical arts but he knows that he could be the best of them.

 

He is younger than he should be when he applies to the Solstryce Academy. He is younger than he should be when he is accepted. He is chosen early by a man whose features and name have withered away over the years, identical to half of the other instructors. He chooses not to remember him.

 

There is only one other pulled away to study alongside him. She is dark of hair and eyes, courtly in manner, soft of tone.

 

Delilah Briarwood is a viper, and for the only time in his life, he is unprepared.

 

She tells him of her fiance, and though it is arranged, they are in love. It does not stop them from stealing meaningless kisses to dissuade the crush of loneliness. They are special, and they know this, and the other students know this, and while they both know the value of independence they are still so very young. 

 

She whispers to him under a new moon that she has been studying necromancy, since there is no better place to try than right under the law's nose. They are connected enough that, at this moment, he promises not to tell. It is only the first of many promises he will break, although this one takes him many years.

 

Their schooling, special or not, continues to pass without note. They are close, physically, but the final lesson they are intended to learn as students is one that they both had learned many years ago, independently, as all of the most important lessons are imparted.

 

His parents are on vacation when his test is undergone. It is too simple by far to enter their summer manse and purge his conscience of any remaining hints of weakness. This is the lesson he was taught by his absent mother, by his disinterested father, by the people who watched him stagnate until he raised himself by applying to the Academy: familial ties are bondage all the same.

 

Within a week's time, he watches Delilah do the same. She returns to his and their master's side, and while he has never been vocal, she is open about what she takes away.

 

Parents are fleeting. You can never fully gather all of your lessons from them until they are dead. On occasion, it is necessary to expedite the process, if someone shows true potential. Like her. Like him. Like her fiance, somewhere in the short future ahead. Like still others, perhaps, worlds away, decades ahead.

 

Time passes. During that, he accepts positions of higher and higher rank, Archmage a pedestal down an ever-shorter path that he walks with ease. His old master, still indistinguishable, face as bland as the people he stands above, goes missing, one final tie to unravel so that his history is appropriately unnecessary. 

 

Delilah Briarwood flees the Empire in disgrace at his word, and some small part of him still hopes that she will relearn their most important lesson but knows that her willful ignorance of it has been her folly. Familial ties are bondage all the same - even those of a wife to her husband. 

 

And then, he is an Archmage. He can be better.

 

He is asked to take students, to find those that will study under him the same way he was chosen to study under someone else. He takes his students, younger than the rest, younger like he was, and vows they will never forget him. 

**Author's Note:**

> what UP i know THIS wasn't what you were expecting!! I'm still working on part 2 of cut cord but i haven't been able to shake this headcanon and honestly can't BELIEVE i haven't seen anyone talking about it. thanks for reading!


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